


The Guns of Love Disastrous

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Imperialistic Intentions, Inappropriate Use of Propaganda Material, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Kylo Ren Has Issues, M/M, assassination attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:04:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6696649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Resistance move against the First Order with a dramatic strike to the very heart and voice of their operations.</p><p>They may have made a dangerous miscalculation as to what affect this will have on Kylo Ren.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Guns of Love Disastrous

**Author's Note:**

> A couple weeks back, I saw [this lovely picture](http://pidgy-draws.tumblr.com/post/142109802011/its-all-for-you) go by on my dash, and was utterly enchanted by the idea of Hux wrapped in the banner of the First Order. I chatted for a while with brodinsons about it, but never got much further than that. And then I ran across the picture again yesterday and goddammit, I just had to _do_ something with the feels.
> 
> So: apologies as always to the poor artist, pidgy draws, especially as I'm pretty sure she'd prefer fluff over whatever the hell this is. But my brain's been knocking around the dark places this week, and I just...I took that idea of Kylo Ren's pronouncement of _it's all for you_ and took it quite literally. Oops. There are many great and talented writers in this fandom and I am not one of them. But sometimes, the fantastic art means I just have to try and get the story out. I'm sorry for fucking it up, but here it is all the same.  <3
> 
> Also, there's a reason why I didn't use the **Major Character Death** tag. But I did use that one about the Force. Kylo Ren cannot be trusted to make the sensible decision, after all.

The assassin didn’t get far. Ren supposed he hadn’t intended to; even with the element of clear surprise inherent to the attack, there were not many places he _could_ go. While the chaos of the inevitable evacuation and lockdown might have given him enough hope to run on, he must have known he’d have little chance of hiding from the wrath of the Master of the Knights of Ren.

They’d been clever enough about their machinations to mask him until the pivotal moment. Ren hadn’t known of the man’s intentions until the shot had been taken – until the shot had in fact taken its target, Hux crumpling to the ground with that sharp elegance he hadn’t surrendered even in death. Yet it appeared Resistance had the sense to realise when some operatives could be nothing else but expendable.

The man knew he would die. It was only a matter of time – and for said man, it had almost run out.

Ren had caught him at great distance; the Force stasis held the man still as Ren approached, almost lazy and languid in his slow step. But it was not grief, nor was it madness. It was the simple surety of a predator at the end of his hunt, come to see what warm meal awaited bared teeth.

This one was garbed in the uniform of a TIE fighter pilot, lean and strong and young. One easy flick of his other wrist ripped the helmet from an unbowed head, revealing the face beneath. An ordinary creature indeed; dark eyes, shaggy hair, chin stubbled with the light shadow of a beard.

“So.” The man tilted said chin upward, eyes glittering with what he clearly thought was pride, yet Ren knew was something closer to cold and lonely fear. “So: this is it, then.”

His smile could not be seen through the mask, nor heard through the voice modulator; yet, the man still trembled before its cruel curl. “Don’t be a fool,” Ren said, and smiled wider. “I’m not going to kill you _here_.”

“Oh, it’s to be a touch of torture first, then?”

The bravado of both voice and stance coiled low in Ren’s abdomen, as warm and familiar as arousal. The ever-growing fear beneath the man’s feigned courage gave that same sensation only deeper resonance. It prickled along every nerve ending like electric charge, leaving his skin too tight, drawn taut across bone and muscle; Ren felt larger in soul than his frame ought to have allowed, some avenging spirit descending to set again the galaxy to the true right and order.

“Not torture in the traditional sense,” he said, very nearly kindly; this man, after all, was now a part of something far greater than his ignorance would permit him to understand. Turning his head, angling it upward, Ren clicked his modulator to comms mode so he might hail the bridge and its commanding officer. “I have the assassin. Clear the plaza _now_ , save for what is necessary.”

Clicking the comms off again, waiting for no answer nor affirmative, Ren turned back to the mighty dais at the northern end of the plaza. He could make the man walk to his demise. Or perhaps stumble his way there upon broken feet and hands, a trail of blood stretched out in penitent trail behind him. But Ren did not wish to damage the goods before they were of use. Hux would be surprised to know it, but Ren could surrender temper and desire to the ideals of logic and pragmatism. It was also just easier to open his palm, fury flowing through him as a river. The man’s grunt of pain was a balm to fears Ren could not permit. To see him thus, spread cruciform: chest thrust forward, neck arched taut, arms trailing behind…a thing of beauty, indeed.

A most needful thing, as it were.

Ren turned more fully, began to move: a quick step chosen, worn boots stalking out his echoing steps upon the hard granite tile of the plaza. Even now it remained beautiful, this new gathering place built for the First Order to rally upon in the days after Starkiller. That planet-wide base had been an undeniable and great loss, but it had also come only after a decisive victory. Only a fool went to war expecting his enemy to be the only one to die.

And how the Order had risen and rallied to see him again: their general, standing before them proud and posturing and powerful still. Hux had become a man who knew intimately the bitter taste of failure. But he had not allowed it to be his defining moment. Snoke had not elevated him to the face of the Order for Hux to turn it away at the first taste of real defeat.

No, Hux had not been defeated at all. He had regrouped, recharged, had taken the hard-learned teachings of Starkiller and made of them a new kind of lesson. Before, he had been a man of clear rhetoric and practised strategy; the toy soldier in his perfect pressed uniform. Valuable, yes, but untested and untried by the vagrancies of unsimulated battle.

 Now, Hux had become a veteran of both active genocide and Resistance sortie, a man who could own his mistakes and make of them a victory. For the first time all might see he played the long game, and never rest all his resources upon one gambled hand.

Ren had reached the podium, again. The great courtyards behind lay nearly deserted, full evacuation complete. Various detached squadrons remained on patrol, but they gave him a wide berth. The Knight had his man, of course, this singular agent – though as Hux would say, it did not hurt to be cautious. Ren suppressed a bitter laugh, at that; had the general been as cautious as was his wont to advise others, it would never have come to this.

_But then, perhaps he wanted this. Perhaps he wanted to know, too. You told him a thousand times no harm would come to him, when you were by his side._

Oratory had been one of Hux’s great masteries – and from the beginning he’d claimed that all the holos in the galaxy would mean nothing if their audience could not see him at the heart of it. They had to know that he was real. That the general and the order he offered were both something tangible and within reach. That he could be touched.

 _Could be killed_.

Ren ascended the flowing staircase to the grand dais, his prisoner rising behind him. Over the years he had fielded a thousand complaints from the general regarding his own excesses; how many times had Hux begrudged him the cost associated with the destruction of consoles and command centres? But the rich silken banners fluttered above him now in easy mockery, yards upon yards of excessive expenditure. Hux had always demanded the finest, for the backdrops of his propaganda. For the good of their Order.

A gaping maw lay opened to their left, where one of the smaller flanking banners had been yanked down from its moorings. It lay now upon the great dais, the dark geometric symbol of the First Order branded into the fabric. Coloured brightly crimson, it darkened to deep maroon towards its centre – where it rose up, curling and curving over some unseen form beneath.

Ren stalked across to the mass of red; he stopped at its foot, the man suspended at the head. Only then did he lean down, drawing back the fabric like a magician revealing the last of his secrets with careless disregard.

“Look at him.”

The rebel did not, eyes fixed upon the horror of Kylo Ren alone. “Do you expect me to repent of my sins?” And for the first time the tremor of his ever-present fear ironed itself away, hardened and cast aside beneath the righteous indignation of a man both brave and fool enough to die for his cause. “Did _he_ ever look upon the cosmic boneyards of the Hosnian System and know of the billions of souls he condemned to lie amongst its remnants?”

“ _Look at him_.”

It was no suggestion, though he used no Force upon this subcreature, either. The ugly demand simply brooked no argument. And Ren, too, looked down.

It should have hurt to see him this way: General Brendol Hux II, dead upon the hallowed stones of his beloved parade ground. Blood spread out from beneath his body in a bloody aura, rich and dark, central and nearly circular. No medical attention had been rendered him. Ren had not permitted it. There had been no point: the single shot had taken Hux in the heart, had killed him outright. Those who ordered the death likely wanted him to suffer more. But it could only be easier this way. And then they might pretend they’d made the more noble choice, besides.

“I don’t regret it.”

The words spilled out of the assassin in a tangle of tongue and nerves; again he had regressed to a state of desperation, rather than steely resolve. Ren only nodded. “Why should you?” he asked, almost conversational. Yet before the man might answer, his gloved hands rose.

The man, though paralysed, still braced himself for an impact that never came. Ren’s hands only fixed upon the helmet, cast aside as the catches released. The unease of the rebel grew. It only made him smile. There were many stories of Kylo Ren, of what he might be beneath the mask. They knew some of it: that he had been scarred by the battle with their scavenger heroine, crippled by the Wookiee who had helped raised him.

And Ren revelled in the truth of it: his regal easy grace, a body in fine fighting form. And even a non-sensitive’s mind would recoil at the way he coiled the Force about his entire body, a sleeping shadow waiting his command. Had the assassin been able to move, he’d have folded in upon himself; this was not the broken creature he’d been promised, the quick death at the hands of a mind lost to the dark and to hate.

“They call me the beast of the First Order. Don’t they.” Ren blinked, tilted his head. “And you thought – if you took his heart, the head would go too, yes?”

The man’s throat worked, eyes wide enough to be ringed entirely in white. “You’ve always been mad.” He attempted a cocky smile, managed something cracked and bleeding instead. “Taking your general from you was just the beginning.”

“You haven’t taken anything.” Ren stepped forward. “But they are right about the madness – because I would have to be.” The air about him shimmered, grew dark even in the full daylight of the planet’s cool clear morning. When he smiled, the ground beneath them shivered with the gleeful horror of it. “Because only a madman would do _this_.”

One hand shifted low, to his belt. The man flinched. Ren could not blame him for averting his eyes from it: the inevitability of the blade, of the searing cut and cauterisation of its swing. But neither did Ren thrust upon him now. After unclipping the hilt, he crouched to set it carefully beside Hux’s motionless left hand.

As the air itself seemed to burn with fresh blazing energy as Ren now went down fully upon his knees. The man remained held before him, splayed and helpless as any insect upon an arachnid’s finely-spun web. Straddling the body, settling back upon him, Ren found Hux to be faintly warm still. The austere features had become oddly gentle at rest; in the moments before the shot had lodged in his heart Hux had been near-screaming, eyes aflame, spittle upon his lips. One final sentence, half-shouted, then: silence.

Ren raised his eyes from the dead general, met those of the Resistance’s offered sacrifice. The distaste, the disgust wrought upon the man’s face – both emotions had their place amongst the arsenal of Ren’s gifts. But the man’s fear tasted sweeter, burned deeper. And it would prove far more useful to Ren now as he smiled with all of his teeth.

“Let me show you _true_ madness.”

His left hand moved down, laid itself upon the breast of the general’s jacket. The neat little hole didn’t quite tell the truth; Ren could lean forward just a little and feel the faint give of pulverised flesh beneath, the solidifying heat of stilled blood. He pressed down harder, just enough. No heartbeat lay there now, the fierce military tattoo of it, gone. Silenced. _Stolen_.

He blinked, just once. The taste of saltwater was but fleeting as his right hand rose, extending out towards the trembling form hanged above.

“You will make yourself useful, now.”

The man arched, _screamed_. The sudden rush of it dizzied him, but still Ren drew it in. The general’s beloved Starkiller had been the same, drinking deep of its own bitter fuel, greedily consuming the burning heart of its chosen sun.

In the old days, they’d called healing a gift of the Light. The Jedi had been fools. All such acts were but mere function of the Force – and for all the talk of light, of dark, of balance and of the fall: the Force could only be what the user made of it.

Ren wrenched at the man’s lifeforce with a near-childish glee now, his own body become burning conduit; even as he revelled in the glory of fresh life coursing through his veins, he gritted his teeth, forced it out rather than keeping it selfishly to himself.

And then, he thrust _in_ , once more. The grasp, the tug, the agony of it; all were fierce and harsh and hurting. Ren no real knowledge of anatomy, of creation, though he needed neither. The body knew itself. And in life, Hux had himself been the very epitome of order. In that he might restore himself to full function, if given the opportunity. The time. The _power_.

And Kylo Ren burned with power – a power that could only be called dark in its vengeful use. An eye for an eye.

 _Your life for his_.

The man gasped for wretched breath now, voice quite gone; he had screamed it all to hoarseness, vocal chords torn and shredded. Ren, shifting upon the general’s body, pressed his own hand harder against the ruined chest. It burned, skin prickling and pained and alive. It mattered not. Pain was not all he felt. Beneath it lay the sense of true pleasure: thrumming through him, an electric surge of life in the face of death.

From childhood Ren had known intimately the way of the Force. Where others could look to the sky, see only the colour lent either by night, or by day: he could see the kaleidoscope potential of all colours behind it, ever shifting and forever strange. There would be stars hung there even in the daylight, and the shadow of the sun would burn golden and bright come nightfall. Ben had only need to look to a flower to see it both as dormant seed and withered come the winter, even as it yet grew fresh and strong in damp earth.

And then, too: Ben might see an adult smile and nod in his direction, while forever hearing the ugly thoughts beneath: _strange-looking little thing; and such peculiar eyes. He’ll never have the beauty of his mother, the charm of his father._ And still they would smiling, patting his head, murmuring how lucky his parents were to have such a lovely child as little Ben Solo.

His own mouth opened wide. A deafening roar shook the very skies above, a thunderous declaration of war waged and already won. The man, shuddering above him, jittering in his unseen bonds, seemed alight with skyfire; a lightning rod blazing to full flame. Blood dripped from his eyes, his nose, scattered in wild patterns across the clean clear stone beneath his trembling feet.

Ren released a long sigh, and then, a drawing in of fresh air that tasted of burning ozone, of iron and copper and salt. His skin shifted and stirred beneath the touch of a thousand unseen fingers; his very soul felt to dance upon a knife edge, the sharpest delineation between the rise and fall. A memory of Starkiller, once again: her canon irising open, raw dark energy released to blaze furious across timespace until it rended all asunder, undoing reality at the very seams.

_I remake my own reality._

And then, too: the memory of a thousand kisses, of lips pressed to skin, of teeth and breath and low chuckled mockery, the sweet tang of insult and invitation twisted together upon the same tongue. A moment ago, all lost; this moment, gained again. Beneath him Hux drew in a desperate gasping breath and Ren rocked forward, head thrown back, body shaking in parody of the release of orgasm.

Before them both the shell of the assassin collapsed to the ground: grey-skinned, skin pulled taut over cracked bone a useless husk already cast aside, already forgotten. Ren arched over himself, hands closed upon the beloved face before him. Hux had stilled once more and Ren had ventured too close, dark shadow cast long across still features.

And then, the eyes opened, narrowed, came into focus. Only a little of the fierce sudden tension of his body released as Hux recognised the weight upon him; his right hand twitched, but did not reach for the blaster still yet upon his hip.

“Kylo.”

Ren drew back, reluctant but resolute. Still he remained seated upon him, achingly hard. His mind, chaotic and cleaved wide open by his actions, wished only to lay his whole weight upon him, to hold him down. To have him alone.

“ _Brendol_ ,” he grit out at last, hoarse and hard and hungering; Hux raised a mocking eyebrow, his voice a low drawl.

“Well, it must be bad if you’re addressing me by my first name.” The dry laugh abruptly dissolved into a wracking coughing fit. And yet the creases of forehead, the grimace upon his face: they were more of pain imagined than truly felt. Gloved hands moved to his chest, to the ghost of a misremembered injury. Still they came away tacky with blood; when Hux glared upwards, his eyes burned halfway between suspicion and resignation.

“Ren. What happened here?”

The beauty of him silenced Ren utterly. The pale skin, nearly translucent now, held the faint whisper of freckles that needed rich sunlight to darken again to full potential. The ruin of his once-perfectly coiffured hair blazed about him in rich halo – and then, his eyes. Those pale eyes that he had never determined the colour of; one day, dark as a storm-riddled sea; the next, as clear and bright as a frosted morning upon lost Starkiller.

“ _Ren_.” He struggled upward, rethought his advance when Ren proved an immovable object weighted heavy upon his narrow hips. “Why am I covered in blood?”

 And Ren smiled, a cold and lovely slash across his scarred features. “We are upon the altar of ancient sacrifice.”

“Oh. I see. More mystical Force nonsense.” With a scowl, Hux rolled his eyes upward; said scowl only grew deeper when he noticed the missing banner. “I didn’t approve this. Especially not during my own speech.” With a sudden snap his head turned forward, hands clenching to light fists. “And where _is_ everybody?”

The urge to laugh could not be denied, even as rich frustration filled him. “Can’t you _feel_ it, Hux?” His arms opened wide; somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled across clear blue sky. “Don’t you _remember_?”

“Remember what?”

_Being dead. Being alive. Coming home to me._

Hux closed his eyes, narrow lean body shuddering; his hips twitched, and a sigh escaped lightly parted lips. He lay untouched, and yet already arousal shifted beneath his skin, inadvertent gift of the power that still saturated the very air he breathed. “Ren. What have you _done_?”

It might have been an accusation. But even Hux could not mask the wonder beneath those words; a child realising that not only was the monster beneath his bed real, but that he might tether said beast to his will and wants alike.

Ren leaned forward, tongue over dry lips. “Only what was needful,” he whispered, and Hux’s mouth opened on a silent chuckle, eyes alight and strange in shadow.

“Quite the show you put on, Master Ren.”

The words shivered through him, low and rich and wanting; Ren closed his eyes, hips already moving in slow desire; with a sigh, Hux arched up beneath him, subsided. Pupils blown wide, eyes darkened like sky subsumed by approaching storm, Hux gazed upon Ren alone, words now clipped and sharp.

“Are we alone?”

A deeper thrust, and his fingers dug into the banner still bunched about Hux’s body. “Does it matter?”

Still Hux stared up at him, unmoving. The blue green eyes had lightened again, a creeping smile knowing upon those familiar lips. Ren saw reflected there a hint of his own madness, perhaps. But then, Hux’s sanity was rigid enough, unbendable enough, for most people to name the man completely insane.

And those eyes beckoned him closer; Ren leaned forward, Hux’s voice a low and amused rumble in his restored chest. “No,” he whispered. “No, it doesn’t matter at all.”

So close to his mouth, Ren trembled at the restraint. His lips would taste of blood and victory. Of all they needed to be alive.

Aside from one another.

Ren’s voice turned now rough, demanding, fingers curled to hard fist. “You may never go where I cannot follow,” he warned, harsh against Hux’s lips. And there he swore, rich and resonant and dark in promise: “ _Long live the emperor._ ”

His brow furrowed, pale eyes watchful as Ren drew back enough that their eyes might meet. “But I am not emperor.”

Ren only laughed, low and breathy and bold. “Not even death can take you, when I am by your side.” Again his hips shifted, found the matched hardness to his own, moved in low and steady pulse. “So, tell me, lord general – where would you like to go with me now?”

His eyes searched Ren’s own, knowing and amused. And yet, in the end, Hux said nothing at all. Those clever lips only curved to sly smile as Hux pulled Ren down into demanding bloodied kiss.


End file.
